Digital Workplace Bookhttp://digitalworkplacebook.com
How Technology Is Liberating WorkSat, 04 Oct 2014 14:52:50 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Are we creating digital worlds where we want to work?http://digitalworkplacebook.com/are-we-creating-digital-worlds-where-we-want-to-work/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/are-we-creating-digital-worlds-where-we-want-to-work/#commentsWed, 23 Oct 2013 12:25:14 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=593When we go into the digital workplace is it a place we want to work, or do we just go there because we have to?

If you missed Paul Miller’s talk at Google Campus last week, catch up now and hear his thought provoking ideas around the digital and physical workplace.

If the digital world you work in were a building, would you ever want to step inside it? Imagine the chaos. Each door with a new identity code, rooms that have no access to other rooms, colleagues who seem lost in corridors you can’t find.

In an effort to address this global drag on workplace productivity and satisfaction I am kicking off a series of talks I am giving about the Human-Centred Digital Workplace – and what it would take to create digital services and spaces far superior to what we tolerate today.

My first talk is at Adobe‘s HQ in Silicon Valley next week, but I’ll be speaking again on the evening of Wednesday, October 2nd at Google’s Campus London – an event that is free to attend, thanks to Google (book a seat for the Oct 2nd event).

Physical buildings have design standards

Admire them or not but architects and designers have been building homes, offices, public spaces for hundreds of years – and we have standards and patterns that make many of these environments work for us. But in the digital world, it is like having 30 architects design one building without talking to each other.

Digital workplaces are incongruous jumbles

Outlook, Yammer, Skype, Intranet, SAP, Dropbox, Good, Google, HR online, mobile apps… each one may have its value but it is design chaos with no overall standards for usability, content, navigation, branding, integration etc.

My talk at Google’s Campus London on October 2nd

At this public event I will call for a set of design standards for the digital workplace. Organizations should require all digital services providers to meet these standards as part of their routine purchasing discussions.

That’s what the physical world has done (there are only three standard power sockets across Europe and North America as far as I know) and we need this urgently in the digital world.

Join me at the Google Campus London event and connect with me on Twitter (@paulmillersays) to hear about future speaking dates and to keep the conversation going.

– See more at: http://www.dwforum.com/2013/09/digital-worlds-worth-working-in-october-google-campus-london/#sthash.lgnxHqFX.dpuf

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/digital-worlds-worth-working-in-oct-2nd-talk-at-googles-campus-london/feed/0Leaking roofs and potholes: the “digital office” is unsafe, unstable and inadequatehttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/leaking-roofs-and-potholes-the-digital-office-is-unsafe-unstable-and-inadequate/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/leaking-roofs-and-potholes-the-digital-office-is-unsafe-unstable-and-inadequate/#commentsFri, 09 Aug 2013 13:46:09 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=573Over dinner with some friends at senior levels in the UK public sector, my dining companions recounted all too common stories of dramatic reductions in office space in pursuit of “a big shift to smarter working”. But in each story the “smarter” physical working arrangements were enabled (or more accurately disabled) by digital equivalents hopelessly unsuited to the remote worker.

“Our laptops are eight years old and logging on from anywhere other than in the office is slow, unstable and makes working from home awful,” they said. “This is not smarter working but just cost reduction masquerading as digital empowerment.”

Digital disappointment surrounds us dressed up as “we can work anywhere”. On a Virgin train journey from London to Manchester last week, supposedly featuring enhanced mobile reception and decent grade wifi, the lame connections to the internet and 3G networks turned a potentially productive two-hour journey into mindless, time-wasting digital misery. Even in the tech centre of San Francisco, getting online from my swanky hotel room and lavish lobby was a dismal experience.

Recently Ubiquisys, a UK technology company inspired by poor mobile connectivity in the English countryside, was acquired by Cisco for $310m. Founder Will Franks drew on his own frustration with poor rural connections to develop the technology of small-cell telecoms to enhance call quality and data connection. One effort to fix this digital mess.

The truth is that in the so-called developed world of 2013 the state of the digital workplace as provided by employers and service providers is shockingly bad and has improved only marginally in years. If we can’t get access to power or decent grade wifi we are still stumbling in the digital darkness.

Imagine if these connection chasms were physical – crossing the road would be a life threatening experience, opening an office door would send it crashing to the floor. Buildings would be closed by emergency services and labelled as “unfit for human habitation”. But in the digital workplace we tolerate such fundamental lapses because the current state is so much better than nothing at all.

So many companies are in the throes of creating flexible working but often it remains a real-estate driven push for lower office costs without the essential digital investment to enable such costs savings to be realized through neutral or enhanced productivity.

I believe the issue is that we can see with our eyes that a pipe is leaking, a desk leg is about to collapse or a hotel room needs cleaning, but the digital workplace is by its nature invisible. So hotels, cafes, airports, trains, warehouses and offices get away with dreadful digital provision – and it is hurting us individually, as companies and at national levels.

Finland has a mission to connect its citizens in a drive equivalent to creating the new roads, railways and waterways of the Industrial Revolution. But most countries, including the UK where I live, have no concerted agenda to create the digital highways that we need now.

Governments focus on projects that voters can see physically. High speed trains for 2030 costing $50 billion get all-party support here in the UK. But investing 20% of that digitally in a way that would transform the entire UK economy within five years attracts only lip service.

No Government minister can cut the ribbon on a new digital highway.

Governments and employers need to realize that while physical investment matters, digital infrastructure is in the dark ages, with leaking digital roofs, virtual potholes and dead-end disconnected highways. We must invest far more in the digital infrastructure we all require.

What is your worst “no connection” digital experience?

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/leaking-roofs-and-potholes-the-digital-office-is-unsafe-unstable-and-inadequate/feed/0The Human Centred Digital Workplacehttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/the-human-centred-digital-workplace/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/the-human-centred-digital-workplace/#commentsMon, 10 Jun 2013 11:15:55 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=558In two new reviews of Paul Miller’s book, the emphasis around the human aspects of the Digital Workplace come to the fore.

In Jacob Saaby Nielsen’s review of “The Digital Workplace: How Technology is Liberating Work” he points to not only the freshness of Miller’s perspective on the workplace – and that a different way of working is possible – he also highlights the human centred approach:

This book is not only great because it’s a good example that workplaces can function differently then your run off the mill company. To me, it’s great because it’s a step towards a more humanized workplace, where a lot of the stuff that doesn’t (or rather, shouldn’t) matter about work, is peeled off – and then the juicy, great tasting layers are exposed. It’s not a “guide to implementing this workmodel, right now in your own organization”. It’s a book which will make you reflect, reevaluate, rethink and should you be so lucky, change your view of what work is in 2013, to some degree.

It gave me a different perspective on “the workplace” as such, even with me having worked with the tools which enable the virtual organization, for a long time. I’ve long wanted to create my own business. And currently I’m in a situation where I have the luxury to seriously entertain that idea. The business I have in mind, should I choose to go that way, will be built on a lot of the principles of this book. At the very least, I will be try to implement these principles in my worklife in general, going forward.

In the end, is there any greater compliment to the validity of someones work, than that ?

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/the-human-centred-digital-workplace/feed/0International Association of Business Communicators invites Paul Miller to discuss the future of workhttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/international-association-of-business-communicators-invites-paul-miller-to-discuss-the-future-of-work/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/international-association-of-business-communicators-invites-paul-miller-to-discuss-the-future-of-work/#commentsThu, 16 May 2013 10:40:56 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=548How will the future of work affect business communicators? This is just one of the questions that will be explored when Paul Miller, author of The Digital Workplace: How Technology is Liberating Work, talks to the IABC in New York on 22 May 2013.

Bob Libbey, New York IABC Chapter President and Head of Digital and Social Communications at Pfizer Inc. will interview Miller on themes including the future of work; how organizations that invest in the digital workplace help create a level playing field where all employees feel trusted, empowered and more equal; and the implications for employee communications. They’ll also address how organizations that stick to the “command and control” approach to work will fall behind.

“Technology is liberating work but how to communicate with and engage staff and contractors in a fragmented physical work world? Where does the organization end and the “extended organization” begin – who should communicators be including in their universe? What is left for the business communicator when CEOs can tweet and blog direct internally and externally? If you are 23-years-old and entering the industry, what skills and networks will really matter for you? Companies and skills are disappearing but new forms of success are being created right now. ” says Miller.

The event, from 6.30-8.00pm on 22 May in Midtown, Manhattan, is unmissable for any communicator who deals with a workplace in transformation of communicating to those who do.

The event, which takes place on 25 and 26 April 2013, will bring together high-level personnel from some of the world’s leading companies to discuss the current challenges facing the digital workplace.

Bringing his unique style of interaction, Paul Miller will challenge executives from Lego, Philips, Audi, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo, among others, to think outside the “digital” box in his role leading a roundtable on “The social workplace: rethinking communication and collaboration in the age of social networks”.

“INTRA.NET Reloaded has become the ‘Davos’ of the intranet, collaboration and digital workplace industry – where the senior people driving this digital transformation in work gather, connect and share,” commented Miller. “I will be encouraging people to think about the impact of the new age of the social enterprise on leadership, remote teams and culture – plus the danger of isolation and the implications of the death (or at least decline) of the office.”

Paul Miller is the CEO and Founder of the Digital Workplace Group which includes the Digital Workplace Forum (DWF), a confidential, invitation-only grouping of major organizations that are committed to sharing, investigating and measuring the performance and business value of their digital workplaces. The purpose of DWF is to radically improve the performance, scope and impact of the digital workplaces of partners organizations – positively impacting recruitment, retention, productivity, environment, travel, real estate and HR.

Current DWF partners are Aviva, Deutsche Post, DHL Group and Johnson & Johnson. More details on the Digital Workplace Forum can be found at http://www.dwforum.com.

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/paul-miller-intra-net-reloaded-2013/feed/0Is working at Yahoo! no better than “gentrified slavery”?http://digitalworkplacebook.com/working-at-yahoo-gentrified-slavery/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/working-at-yahoo-gentrified-slavery/#commentsMon, 25 Mar 2013 10:54:51 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=512At first blush the term “slavery” may seem too strong to describe Yahoo!’s controversial new policy. I’m sure any person who has experienced any type of slavery would never compare her experience to being paid a salary (and benefits) to work in a climate-controlled office for 40 hours per week.

I use the term not to suggest they are the same, but to highlight the issue of human dignity. We live in an age where the perspective of “employee as a cog in the machine” has been dissected and invalidated. This post on the history of workforce automation by David Saintloth offers a rather academic review of the issue.

All of these modern findings suggest one thing: Treat employees as human beings with an inherent right to dignity and your company can thrive.

This means that knowledge-based employees whose work isn’t directly tied to a physical facility should have the flexibility to work where and when they can best do there jobs. A company that doesn’t provide the trusting, respectful, and performance-driven culture that supports flexible working is failing to respect basic human dignity.

The idea of eliminating flexible working and forcing all employees back into the office is reminiscent of the panopticon, a prison design by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. French philosopher Michel Foucault later used the concept to describe the relationship between surveillance, discipline and power.

Having taken time to reflect on the “get back to the office now” comments from Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, it is clear to me that what she is actually saying is no better than “gentrified slavery”.

These policies are based on physical control and are rooted in an underlying lack of trust and respect, and a reliance on surveillance. In this view, real slavery and this rigid opposition to flexible working are related points on a spectrum.

I used the phrase “gentrified slavery” in my book “The Digital Workplace – How Technology is Liberating Work” in July 2012 and Yahoo! is a perfect example in action. What is Yahoo! doing when it commands its remote workers to be “at the office” daily or leave the company? It has become evident that in this case the issue is not about productivity and management but about physical control.

Today, for most organizations, where work happens has become a choice rather than a necessity. We do not need to travel for hours to and from the office in order to have a productive day’s work. Microsoft, for example, allows staff to choose where they work and while they create compelling and appealing working environments, they do not mandate that staff be there each day. Many staff choose to spend some or all of the week in the Microsoft facilities – but that is the key word: choose.

As I said in my book, and it applies to Yahoo! totally:

“The issue of physical control is still fundamental to work in most organizations today. Looked at objectively, I believe modern work shares some of the deeply unpleasant characteristics of a historical form of slavery, albeit in a ‘gentrified’ form. Work often involves control over the physical movement of staff: ‘I want my people here at their desks each day, all day’ say many managers – just as slaves were, and still are, restrained physically in order to control their movement. The other key aspect of historical slavery is that slaves were tethered, then supervised and monitored to check that they were working as required. The modern workplace equivalent is the manager who operates by only feeling secure and in control if they can directly watch their team at work at their desks.

“This is revealed when managers resist the notion of their staff working outside the office because ‘I don’t want them wasting time watching TV at home – I need them here where I can keep my eye on them.’ The key concern for such managers with portable work practices is the fear of losing control. These two aspects of most work still create a gentrified type of slavery, based on physical control and direct observation. The ability to choose and flex, based on what is needed, breaks the yoke of physical restraint for the first time. Overwhelmingly, people then feel a deep sense of release and liberation, as if an invisible chain has been unlocked.”

In many cases this is not about whether productive, innovative work happens in the shared space of the office or in the isolation of home or the local coffee shops. It is about culture and control. In most studies, home-based workers are 30% more productive than office workers but in my experience leading a company with 60 people and no fixed offices, a mixture of formats creates an ideal combination that produces the best for the company and each person.

Two types of companies

But Mayer is not alone in her comments. Just as disappointing were the words from Google CFO Patrick Pichette when asked how many people at Google work from home and he said “as few as possible”. There is a sinister quality to the Googleplex offices where an exotic theme park is designed to attract people to work there. What staff want is choice and influence over where and how they work, so long as they are producing quality results. Google is dressing their policy in shiny clothes but creating an expectation (or is it a subtle command?) to be in their Mountain View HQ each day rather than in San Francisco where many staff live.

Both Yahoo! and Google are waging a losing battle. What will Google do when their staff tire of commuting to and from the Googleplex each day? Get more table tennis tables, better food, more entertainment? What many Google staff want is to decide when they come to the office and when they work from a cafe (probably with other Googlers) in downtown San Francisco, when from home and who knows what other future variants.

Yahoo! and Google are espousing a culture tied too heavily to the past, while other large technologies companies such as Microsoft and Cisco take a totally different stance. As do many large corporates. One of the best examples is Unilever, whose HR Director Fiona Laird says:

“We are investing in facilities but it’s your choice where you work – home, café or a Unilever office. We notice we have higher rates of occupancy now but people aren’t forced to come to work: it’s their decision where they work on any given day.”

Work and the means of work have been detached in the digital world of work today and that location dependency will never return. Gentrified slavery is what we have been used to for decades and companies like Cisco, Accenture, Microsoft have accepted and even celebrated that as an evolution in working habits. It seems Yahoo!, Google and Facebook (which operates much like Google) are still wedded to working patterns from the last century.

Flexible working is rooted in a basic respect for human dignity. It requires a company to focus on employees’ results and develop inspiring and effective managers, rather than focus on 19th century workplace surveillance. This can be more challenging than forcing employees back into the office. But isn’t that often the case for doing the right thing?

Five Digital Workplace Maxims

You do not need to meet physically to build trust; while it can help it is not essential.

If you don’t design your future in this area, it will design you and your culture.

The Digital Workplace produces less ‘politics’ and distractions than being in an office all day, every day.

Work itself is not getting easier or less demanding – it’s just that its ‘shape’ and location are changing.

It is impossible to implement a successful Digital Workplace without high degrees of trust and autonomy.

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/working-at-yahoo-gentrified-slavery/feed/0Digital work author Paul Miller to speak at European Microsoft SharePoint Conferencehttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/digital-work-visionary-paul-miller-to-speak-at-european-microsoft-sharepoint-conference/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/digital-work-visionary-paul-miller-to-speak-at-european-microsoft-sharepoint-conference/#commentsMon, 18 Mar 2013 17:41:31 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=49918 March 2013, London and New York.

This key SharePoint 2013 event, supported by Microsoft, will close with an in-depth interview by Conference Chairman Jasper Oosterveld on the past, present and future of the digital workplace, and the implications of SharePoint 2013 becoming the digital foundation for work.

how the traditional physical workplace is impacted by the current digital workplace

the impact of SharePoint on the evolving digital workplace

how technology is liberating work

key social software trends for organizations

how to mobilize and manage knowledge in the organization.

The conference is designed to help users share best practice and make the most of their SharePoint platforms, enabling professionals to learn from other user organizations and manage their business processes better.

Asked about the interview, Miller speculates: “Will SharePoint become the virtual backbone of the Digital Workplace? And, if so, is that to be welcomed or feared? I hope we can address these and other vital questions the SharePoint community faces.”

In fact, the impact of SharePoint 2013 on the intranet space is something IBF is already looking into. The IBF research team has recently begun work on a research report, starting with a survey on how organizations plan to implement SharePoint 2013.

About the Digital Workplace Forum

The Digital Workplace Forum (DWF) is a confidential, invitation-only group for major organizations that are committed to share, investigate and measure the performance and business value of their digital workplaces. The purpose of DWF is to radically improve the performance, scope and impact of the digital workplaces of partners’ organizations – positively impacting recruitment, retention, productivity, environment, travel, real estate and HR.

Current DWF partners include Deutsche Post DHL Group and Johnson & Johnson.

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/digital-work-visionary-paul-miller-to-speak-at-european-microsoft-sharepoint-conference/feed/0Revenge of the office against the digital nomadshttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/revenge-against-the-digital-nomads/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/revenge-against-the-digital-nomads/#commentsTue, 29 Jan 2013 12:53:28 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=483As the impact of mobile technology has swept across the workplace, the office itself has come under threat. Why bother coming into work at all if we can work anywhere we want?

But while many have predicted the death of the office, a growing number of major companies are staging a fight-back to attract the “digital nomads” back to physical workplaces again.

Unilever’s new Singapore office

We have all heard about Google’s lavish fun palaces around the world but such examples are becoming more common, with newly designed and re-imagined offices that provide compelling reasons for staff to make the journey to work. The logic runs that if the office can feel attractive and engaging to be in, why would we not choose to come to work there?

One of the most ambitious programmes has come from global consumer goods giant Unilever. With 167,000 staff and brands from Persil to Dove, its “Agile Working” initiative – which involved redesigning 45 of its 100 offices with areas for concentrated individual work, spaces to collaborate and “vitality” areas with treadmill desks, sofas and cafes – is reporting rises in productivity, carbon reduction and employee engagement.

As Fiona Laird, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Unilever, says: “We want our staff to feel and touch Unilever and in the new offices our people can connect, be inspired and feel the brand.”

Since Unilever began its global roll-out three years ago it has reported 35% greater use of office space, 40% less energy waste, a doubling in virtual meetings and 23,000 fewer long-haul flights – with 80% of staff feeling more productive and better able to balance personal and work demands.

Remodelled – Unilever’s Bogota office

For Laird, giving staff choice is fundamental to this new way of working. “We are investing in facilities but it’s your choice where you work – home, café or a Unilever office. We notice we have higher rates of occupancy now but people aren’t forced to come to work: it’s their decision where they work on any given day.”

Unilever examined the experience of organizations who had tried an “office-less environment” like IBM and Accenture (to varying degrees) and decided that physical connection still mattered for the Unilever culture.

What is intriguing is that, while technology nowadays enables work to leave the office, Unilever is just one of many companies who fear the fragmentation that can result from mobile working. IBM, a pioneer from 2000 onwards of the “home office” worker approach, found staff in recent years referring to their employer as “I-B-M = I’m By Myself”. Now IBM, like another home working advocate, BT, is attracting staff back to refreshed offices due to its anxiety about employee isolation and a loss of innovation.

Elsewhere, GlaxoSmithKline, the global pharmaceutical giant, has created flexible working spaces for 1,300 employees at its offices in Philadelphia and opened a 200-person office along these lines in Colombia in Spring 2012. Edward Danyo, Manager of Workplace Strategy, says: “We’ve seen a 45% increase in the speed of decision making in the new spaces and our biggest surprise is that within two weeks of the changes most folks say they wouldn’t go back to cellular space.”

One of Unilever’s “vitality zones”

Meanwhile, at its Seattle Campus, Microsoft is embedding new technologies into the office environment, moving engineers more accustomed to their own private offices into shared spaces. Martha Clarkson, who manages the “Workplace Advantage” programme, says resistance is natural but that the new environments are proving popular.

Five key lessons on re-thinking your office

Flexibility applies not only to office design but also to how people shape their own working day.

Big “corner offices” are no longer the “career goal” for young hires – new success badges are in access to powerful digital networks.

This is the time to experiment – use different locations to trial new office concepts and extend what works.

No one wants to come to an office (however funky) if colleagues aren’t there – so fight hard to attract people to come to workplaces.

Does the office have a future long term?

]]>http://digitalworkplacebook.com/revenge-against-the-digital-nomads/feed/0Paul Miller’s keynote speech to Microsoft about the digital future of work now available to view onlinehttp://digitalworkplacebook.com/paul-millers-keynote-speech-to-microsoft-about-the-digital-future-of-work-now-available-to-view-online/
http://digitalworkplacebook.com/paul-millers-keynote-speech-to-microsoft-about-the-digital-future-of-work-now-available-to-view-online/#commentsFri, 30 Nov 2012 17:26:22 +0000http://digitalworkplacebook.com/?p=449Paul Miller, Founder and CEO of the Digital Workplace Group, and author of “The Digital Workplace: How Technology is Liberating Work”, was recently invited to speak to Microsoft staff at the company’s HQ about the new digital landscape of work and how it is transforming our lives.

Microsoft Research has now made a video recording and transcript of the event available to view and download on their website.

The recording features Paul being interviewed by Ephraim Freed, Community Manager at the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF). Topics covered in this fascinating and wide-ranging session include Paul’s definition of the emerging digital workplace and its place in the historical context of work, as well as its effect on non-deskbound workers on the “mobile frontline”.

Paul also talks about some of the other themes from his recent book, including the various opportunities and challenges to both organizations and individuals that arise from this seismic change, as well as the wider implications for society.